


A Million Mistakes

by Macremae, ProblemWithTrouble



Series: Pacific Rim [17]
Category: Pacific Rim (Movies)
Genre: Idiots in Love, M/M, Misunderstandings, Mutual Pining, Poetry
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-27
Updated: 2019-07-27
Packaged: 2020-07-23 09:08:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,375
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20005810
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Macremae/pseuds/Macremae, https://archiveofourown.org/users/ProblemWithTrouble/pseuds/ProblemWithTrouble
Summary: Hermann writes poetry about Newt to clear his mind but what happens when Newt finds it and thinks it's about someone else?“I…Hermann… I mean… That’s my name in that,” Newt stumbled out.“I am aware of what is in this, Newton. As I’m sure you’ve gathered, I wrote it.”“That doesn’t make any sense.”





	A Million Mistakes

Hermann had been having a tough week. Most weeks at the end of the world were hard, but some were worse. There was something wrong in the equation that he was hoping would solidify his prediction model for the attacks, but he couldn’t find it. Usually he could work around it for a while and then go back and the mistake would be so glaring he felt stupid for not having seen it. This time everything had come to a screeching halt.

He had been staring at the boards for hours. He’d stand at one angle and then move to another hoping that the physical change of perspective would shake the problem loose. It had happened before.

With a sigh that he pretended wasn’t as dramatic as it actually was, he went to his desk and pulled the pad of neon green sticky notes towards him.

Things were getting truly desperate and he needed to walk away from the problem. It was a less physical approach to the problem than his pacing, but worked better than anything he’d ever tried before. When he had been young, Hermann had spent hours aimlessly walking through the city in an attempt to get the “fresh air” his family and academic advisors insisted would help him. Instead of any clarity he’d end up working at the problem like a dog with a bone until his muscles ached and he had to call a cab to get home with no real progress made.

The knowledge of what worked had come to him quite on accident, and a little embarrassingly. He had been trying to determine what size the Breach would need to be to allow the kaiju through and why it didn’t seem that any of the ocean water that would certainly have managed to get past as the kaiju emerged, didn’t seem to be missing. He had walked back from the university and was still working on the problem as he opened his mailbox but the sight of Newton’s handwriting on the outside of an MIT envelope addressed to him let the matter drop from his mind.

Newton’s letters had always demanded Hermann’s full attention even before Hermann had grown attached to the man himself. They were blindingly clever in a way that made it clear that he wasn’t trying to impress. He’d write a question mark after a word that he wasn’t sure he had spelt right and didn’t care enough to look up or he’d put a U in parenthesis if American English didn’t utilize a U but British English did. It was all profoundly charming to Hermann.

By the time he had finished reading the letter and was drafting his response – he always wrote at least one draft – the solution to his problem was right there, bright in the center of his mind. It was like remembering a word that had been on the tip of your tongue for hours. The next day he had written his second draft to send to Newton, including his newest breakthrough for Newton’s thoughts.

After their first meeting where Hermann had ruined any chance of Newton ever talking to him again, he’d been forced to find a new way of walking away from his numbers. And he did, in poetry. He had whole notebooks filled with poetry about everything from his family, to the weather, to his own existential dread.

The most effective for his purposes, by far, were the ones about Newton. It seemed he still had the ability to draw Hermann’s mind away from a problem with ease. The first few had been about the pain of losing his best friend, about his own heartbreak. Once they were forced together again, Hermann noticed a shift in his own writings and feelings about Newton. He found that even if he had screamed at Newton until he was red in the face ten minutes before, he could sit down at his desk, his writing hidden from sight, and write line after line about how much he still loved the absurd man.

He kept them hidden, of course, it wouldn’t do to let Newton’s know the exact nature of his feelings. He’d never make fun of Hermann for it, because even if they hated each other they held too many of each other’s secrets in their minds. To mock one for something over the line was mutually assured destruction.

No, he wouldn’t mock Hermann for his feelings, he’d do something much worse. He’d withdraw. No more meals with Hermann. No more getting each other coffee or tea just because they were headed that way. There’d be no more silent looks of understanding when someone said something that was more versions of wrong than either of them had time to explain. There might still be fights, but it’d only be about the most important things, no more nagging or poking fun, Newt would be out for blood and he’d get it every time.

Hermann had to keep it a secret. The problem was that the poems didn’t work as well when he tried to write them in his room. He’d end up stuck on them just like he had been stuck on his problem and that’d only frustrate him. There just wasn’t as much room to think in his room and the sound of Newton’s experiments and music lent just the right level of background noise. So, he wrote them in the lab, and he hid them in a notebook at the bottom of a drawer hidden under old reports. If Newton ever saw Hermann in the drawer there was always a good reason and but boring enough that Newt would never investigate, and if he did, he’d never notice that at the bottom there was a small leather-bound notebook filled with love poems about him.

Hermann looked down at the poem he had just written and tried not to smile. It was sweet and sentimental even by his standards. He pressed it to the next blank page of the notebook and tucked them away before Newton had even looked away from where he was making notes into his voice recorder about something he had under the microscope.

With the drawer closed, the boards loomed over him, the feeling of being on the edge of a breakthrough was still there and there was nothing more for it. Even his most potent distractions hadn’t worked against this problem. Maybe he needed some food or rest. If he ran into Tendo in the mess all the better, despite his own insistence that he was nothing special Tendo was one of the few people that Hermann could discuss Breach physics with.

* * *

Newt didn’t consider himself a snoop. Sure, loads of other people would call him a snoop but he preferred the term curious. His curiosity was the part of himself that he liked best. It was what made him an amazing scientist, it was what led to every breakthrough in K-Science, and it was going to save the world. Sometimes his curiosity pushed him to non-kaiju related investigations but that had really only gotten him in real trouble a few times.

Hermann’s sticky notes were not likely to be the cause of real trouble, that was reserved for things like the time he had accidentally walked in on Pentecost and the older Hansen and Pentecost had made him send his requisition forms to Accounting instead of directly to Pentecost. Sure, that’s where they had been supposed to go before but Pentecost made an exception for Newt and Hermann because unlike some Wall-Focused idiots he believed in science. New equipment was a lot harder to get from Accounting but eventually Pentecost got sick of Hermann requesting the things Newt needed and lifted the ban.

Hermann’s sticky notes on the other hand, were just a quirk of Hermann’s personality that he hadn’t figured out yet and not knowing was starting to wear on him. The notes were brightly colored, and the unused ones sat neatly between the computer monitor and a cracked mug full of pens. The used ones were nowhere to be found.

If Newt had sticky notes they would be stuck all over the chalkboard, the computer screens, different parts of the desk. Why bother if you weren’t going to use them?

Even though Newt had never actually seen one of the sticky notes after it had been written on, he had seen Hermann, on his bad days, sitting hunched over a pad, brow furrowed, and mouth in a firm line as he wrote on them. Newt had never gotten close enough to see what had been written.

Today was one of Hermann’s bad days and Newt was determined to get a good look at what it was that he wrote on them.

Newt had picked up the signs of one of Hermann’s bad days within their first year of sharing a lab and by now the signs were as familiar as his own bad days. It always started with Hermann standing on his ladder, chalk poised to continue writing but nothing would happen for hours. Then he’d sit with his tablet and stylus reworking every part of the equations. If that didn’t work, he’d pace in front of the boards for hours. And then came the sticky notes.

Somehow, he always missed whatever it was that Hermann did with them after he was done. No matter how closely he might watch Hermann, he did work and usually only remembered that Hermann was in the lab when he moved or made some noise that Newt hadn’t been expecting. His attention would only go back to Hermann after he had stood up and the green paper was hidden away.

Most days the notes worked. He’d get up from his desk, check on of his notes, smile up at the board and then the steady and secretly soothing sound of chalk would start up again.

On the worst days, days like today, Hermann would sit with the pad of paper for a while and then give up and leave the lab. Newt didn’t know where he went on those days, but he was always gone for at least an hour, usually somewhere between two and three.

Hermann had left about ten minutes ago, and Newt had set to finding the notes. He had no luck in the first drawer, all that was in there were more blank notepads, pencils, pens, and four different styles of calculators. Newt was going to have to work hard not to make fun of him for that later.

The second drawer he had been more hopeful for, but there were just old notebooks with handwritten equations and notes that all seemed to be outdated by at least two years.

The third drawer was just as disappointing. It was filled with dark green hanging folders. Some of them had Hermann’s previously submitted reports. Some of them had Newt’s old reports – those were covered in red pen marking up everything from theories Hermann didn’t like to Newt’s grammar.

There was also a lot of blank HR complaint forms. The fact that Hermann still bothered to submit them to HR, which was down to one person for hundreds of people living and working in the Shatterdome, was kind of cute. They always gave Newt a copy of the complaint and told him to knock it off, and then sent him on his way. Some of them were even funny – “Dr. Geisler defaced my work equipment” meant that Newt had drawn a picture of a kaiju in a party hat on the chalkboards for Hermann’s birthday.

Newt flicked through the rest of the green folders but found them empty. He groaned in frustration and pushed them all to one side because he felt like throwing a small tantrum and no one was around to judge him. When he did though he saw that there was something on the bottom.

A small black leather-bound notebook was hidden under the folders, almost completely hidden in the shadows.

He pulled the notebook out and sat the rest of the way down on the floor cross-legged as he opened it. Inside there was page after page of sticky notes pressed to the pages. The ones at the front had been taped in, while the ones further back were just pressed in. For a second, he wondered if there was a reason until he remembered that he had stolen Hermann’s tape dispenser eight months ago in hopes of starting a fight or a prank war. It was still hidden behind a container of ammonia in one of the cupboards.

Once he had flipped through to see that there were no other notes or writing in it outside of the green squares Newt opened to a random page that had multiple notes that all seemed to be a part of one poem spread over two pages.

_Can you share your heart with me tonight_   
_I want every part of you_   
_Can you share your heart with me tonight_   
_And I will be true_   
_And I will be true_

_Can you sing a song with me tonight_   
_I will weather any storm_   
_Can you sing a song with me tonight_   
_And I’ll keep you warm_   
_And I’ll keep you warm_

_And if you’re broken_   
_I’ll sit with you_   
_And dry up all your tears_   
_No matter how far_   
_You feel from me_   
_I will always be here_

_Can you be my little spoon tonight_   
_I’ll protect you in your dreams_   
_Will you be my little spoon tonight_   
_Put your faith in me_   
_Put your faith in me_

_Can you stay right here with me tonight_   
_I can promise this is real_   
_Can you stay right here with me tonight_   
_And I’ll help you heal_   
_And I’ll help you heal_

_And if you’re blooming_   
_I’ll grow with you_   
_And conquer every fear_   
_And even if you make_   
_A million mistakes_   
_I will always be here_

Newt couldn’t help the fact that he was smiling down at the page. It was a whole new side of Hermann, one that Newt had seen traces of when they had been writing, but one that had disappeared completely as soon as they had met. Newt had ruined any chance of ever seeing this side of him but knowing he’d been right about Hermann’s romantic heart was nice.

It was also nice to know that Hermann had someone that made him so happy. There was still a small pang in his heart that he ignored because his feelings on the matter weren’t important. What was important was the fact that Hermann was happy.

Newt flipped to another page.

_when God made the world in (technically, technically, i know myself) six days_  
_He set aside an hour to plan for you_  
 _Think on that, love_  
 _Six days, one hundred forty four hours, an entire universe to create_  
 _And He took point seven percent for you_  
 _Perhaps that doesn’t seem like a substantial number_  
 _But i know them well_  
 _And you have no idea how important it was that He got you right_  
 _He succeeded, of course_  
 _And created the universe that week_  
 _But he took an hour to give me mine_  
 _And it was worth every moment._

Newt was still smiling as he finished the poem even as tears started to form in the corners of his eyes.

He flipped to the back where the newer poems were and read another.

_Tell me how love feels_  
_There is so much of it inside you;_  
 _Your soul that sings out through your eyes like the death of a star_  
 _(I chose irony for you, you see, because you are yourself a contradiction_  
 _A bane and a gift and messy and precise and flawed and perfect all the same)_  
 _You make my heart breathe_  
 _And my lungs beat_  
 _And my hands shake like the worst of winter_  
 _Yet somehow I cannot stay away_  
 _Call me a masochist, among other things_  
 _My life is defined by my pain, my suffering, my struggle_  
 _And loving you is the worst agony I’ve ever felt_  
 _But it is the strongest reminder I have that I am still alive_  
 _That is something I cannot take for granted these days_

Newt sniffled a little bit but forced himself to keep smiling. He was happy. He was happy for Hermann. He closed the book and tucked it back into its original spot, fanning out the folders above it as he blinked away the tears that were making things blurry. He wiped the tears from his eyes as he stood and continued to repeat to himself that he was happy. He was happy because Hermann was happy and that was the most important thing outside of saving the world from kaiju-based destruction.

Newt put away he wounded feelings, feelings that had no right to be wounded in the first place. Hermann had always made it very clear how he felt about Newt.

Without letting himself dwell on it any longer Newt went back to work analyzing the structure of the skin that had been the webbing of a kaiju foot. About an hour later Hermann came back in, went straight for the ladder and was writing his equations once more.

Newt wondered if he went to go see his secret love when he left the lab.

* * *

Hermann never ran into Tendo on his walk and search for food. He did manage to get himself a sandwich and fresh tea from the mess. Both were surprisingly delicious, but he suspected that had more to do with the fact that he hadn’t eaten since his granola bar and a handful of baby carrots he’d had for breakfast nearly eight hours before.

After his half-lunch half-dinner, he went back to his room, set an alarm on his phone for an hour, and took a nap. Seven minutes before the alarm went off, he woke with the solution to his problem clear in his mind. He grabbed his cane, slipped his shoes back on, and went into the lab feeling just a little manic. The fear that he could lose it was very real but as soon as it was written on the board he felt better.

From the ground he was able to see it all worked out in front of him, including the error in the beginning of the set of equations that had held him off from getting to the solution in the first place and set out to correct it.

Sometime later, when he’d been working for hours Newton called out to him that he was going to bed. It wasn’t with his usual volume and it wasn’t followed with a teasing comment to get some beauty sleep himself, but Hermann barely noticed. Newt was probably just having an off day himself.

When he was satisfied that he was at a good stopping place for the day he sat at his desk to make notes of what exactly he would do the next day so that he wouldn’t lose his place after some much-needed rest. He looked at the time, tried to remember how long ago it was that Newt had said goodnight and frowned.

It was nine o’clock which in a world that didn’t need saving, would be a ludicrous time to work until. But they lived in a world that needed saving. Most days they were in the lab by eight, had a break for lunch and dinner, and would still be there until nine or ten.

But it had been hours since Newt left – at least two maybe three – which meant that not only had Hermann missed an actual dinner, but that Newt had left early. The behavior, in and of itself, was not odd and Hermann tried to put it out of his mind. Newt had off days too. Newt probably just needed the additional rest that Hermann had taken at midday. The apocalypse wore on them all.

Since the day was over and Newt was long gone Hermann decided to reread his indulgence from earlier. Somedays the poems he wrote were terrible once he went back to them. They served their purpose, but he never kept them in the notebook once he had passed that judgment. Only the best stayed in for long.

He opened the bottom drawer, moved aside the folders, but stopped short from reaching down to grab it. From one side of the notebook a bright green corner was sticking out. It must have come loose the last time it had been moved, they were excellent sticky notes, but it still happened on occasion, but Hermann knew it hadn’t be the last time _he_ had moved it.

The placement of the notebook was always precise so that the black of the leather blended in with the black of the drawer and the shadows did the rest of the work. The corner of green was a dead giveaway as soon as the files were moved aside. Hermann would never give up his most precious secret due to poor-quality glue.

Someone else had touched it, someone else had flipped through the pages until one had come loose. Someone had read the things he had written. Someone who had been acting a little out of sorts ever since Hermann had come back from his break.

Newton knew.

* * *

What Newt knew was that Hermann was in love with someone else and it was killing him. What he knew was that is heart was breaking in his chest and that all the crying had given him a headache.

The next morning, he got out of bed just as he always did, got ready for work the same way he always did and went into the lab after grabbing a quick bite to eat from the mess. He’d taken the night to watch 80’s horror movie sequels and pull himself together.

Nothing had really changed if he thought about it. Hermann had never been in love with him and his hopes of that ever changing were ridiculous, just as far-fetched as the idea of Hermann breaking up with his mystery love to be with Newt. The odds of them being together were the same as ever. Zero.

Hermann was already in the lab when he got there and turned from the board when he heard Newt come in. Usually, Newt thought he saw a smile on Hermann’s face when Newt came in first thing in the morning. Seeing Hermann always brought at least a desire to smile out in Newt, but this morning Newt saw reality for what it was. Hermann’s expression was cold and distant, he was just making sure that whoever had just walked into the lab wasn’t important enough that he needed to get off his ladder.

That would take some getting used to, Newt thought. He was impartial in his work, but he hadn’t even known how skewed his perception of Hermann was. Things really weren’t that different from their first year in the same lab. Maybe just a little less loud.

Newt gave him a smile and a little wave of his fingers the way he did on mornings when he really wanted to provoke Hermann. He couldn’t help it, some desperate part of him needed to at least reestablish himself as Hermann’s rival, so some part of Hermann could still be his. At his desk he pulled up his notes from the day before and started a comparison against the other samples. Something wasn’t adding up between them and he needed to find it, if the kaiju were changing so dramatically that the cells themselves weren’t behaving how they ought to it could spell trouble for them all.

The part of him that still wanted to pick of fight kept drawing Newt to stare across the lab at Hermann, searching for something to pick at but every time he opened his mouth the smarter side of him cut him off. If Newt was going to be allowed to keep the small part of Hermann he had, he needed to stop pushing him. His daydreams of Hermann getting so frustrated with him that he grabbed Newt and kissed him were gone, time to make some new daydreams.

Maybe after the world was saved Hermann would give him friendly hug before he went off to find the man he loved. Maybe after everything was said and done Hermann would write to him, even if they lived on opposite sides of the world they would stay in touch because they were friends. Newt reminded himself not to daydream scenarios with a jealous boyfriend for Hermann. He wanted a happy balance for Hermann. All three of them could be happy in his new daydreams.

Around noon Newt spoke. “I’m going to go get lunch. Do you want…” Newt wasn’t sure how to finish that sentence. Did Hermann want to come with him? Did Hermann want him to grab him something? Either question was fairly normal in their routine, but today Newt didn’t feel normal.

Hermann turned to him and looked a little surprised but nodded. “Yes. I’ll go with you. Just a moment.” Newt looked away as Hermann climbed down the ladder even though he had used moments just like this to stare at Hermann’s ass thousands of times. It felt wrong to do that now.

They walked together but Newt couldn’t find a single thing to talk about. Every time he opened his mouth half his mind had to concentrate on not telling Hermann that he knew he was in love with someone and how desperately Newt wanted him not to be.

Hermann didn’t seem interested in holding a conversation either. He probably never had been.

So, they walked in silence, and they ate in silence, and they returned to the lab in silence. Silence had never been good for Newt so as soon as they crossed the threshold into the lab, he turned up the music as loud as he could.

* * *

The night that Hermann realized that Newton knew about his feelings was spent lying in bed with an anxious ball of energy in his chest. Hours ticked by as he tried to come up with a way out of his mess but the best he had gotten was to lie and tell Newton that the poems only seemed to be about him and were really about someone else who was completely different from Newton. The main problem with that was that Hermann was an abysmal liar and Newt knew all his tells.

In the end he decided to ignore the problem and hope it went away. Which, like every other time he had tried that route, seemed to make it even worse.

Newton’s wave and smile as he entered the lab in the morning had been wrong, condescending and cruel. But then Newt had asked him to lunch and a small spark of hope bloomed in his chest. It might have been just an old habit that Newt would eventually be able to kill off, but at the time it had felt like an olive branch. A way for Newton to say, “yes I know how you feel but we’re still friends and we can go to lunch together, we can get past this.”

But then nothing was said, and it was logged forever in Hermann’s top five most awkward lunches.

As they walked back Hermann found himself furious with Newton. If Newton had minded his own business and hadn’t gone searching through Hermann’s personal things, they wouldn’t be in this mess. It wasn’t like Hermann had come up to him and forced Newton to confront his feelings. The thought to do something like that had never crossed Hermann’s mind because he valued Newt’s company, his friendship. He never would have put their relationship on the line the way Newton had. And now everything was ruined because Newton couldn’t respect basic boundaries.

He was furious and then Newton turned up his music to a volume that made it impossible for Hermann to think. He marched over, turned it down while looking directly at Newt who had looked shocked and then glared at him.

“I’ve told you a thousand times to keep your infernal music to a reasonable volume,” Hermann shouted at him. It felt good to get some of the frustration out of him. Especially in such a well-worn argument. This argument practically had a script and there was no room for either of them to bring up what they both knew was causing the end of their friendship.

“Just because you say something doesn’t mean I care,” Newt snapped back at him. Just like he always did.

“It is not a complex request to have some common courtesy for the people around you, Newton,” Hermann said.

“It’s music, if you enjoyed life at all you’d be able to understand that it’s good.”

“My ability to enjoy life and the pleasures of it is not inhibited. My lack of desire to listen to the screeching of the nineties is not indicative of my ability to enjoy life, Newton. Some of us have taste,” Hermann shot back.

Newt’s face went blank instead of twisting into the usual sneer and he turned away. He walked out instead of shouting back that yes, some people had taste, but it obviously wasn’t Hermann. Hermann was left standing, his mouth agape in the middle of Newton’s side of the lab with Dolores O’Riordan singing at him.

For a moment Hermann couldn’t even breathe. Everything was ruined. He had ruined everything. Newt had ruined everything. They had ruined everything. It would probably be the last thing they ever did together.

Hermann hated himself for ever having the arrogance to think that Newt would never find his notebook or put together that Newt was the focus of every one of the poems. He never should have written them in front of Newton at all, it was like waving a red cape in front of a bull.

And Newton, whose curiosity was usually such a bright light that brought a begrudging grin to Hermann’s lips every time it shone through the darkness that was their life now, had had to go looking because it was who he was. He couldn’t help the fact that he needed to know everything like he needed to breathe.

Hermann turned off the stereo and looked back to his boards, but the numbers and symbols just swam in front of him, not making any sense. None of it meant anything because every one of his emotions was raging and he couldn’t separate himself from them.

Instead of trying to fight through the emotional fog that had filled his mind Hermann sat down at his desk and pulled the stack of green papers towards him. Maybe if he let every emotion that he was feeling out onto the page he could get through this and he could focus again. Purge the emotions so that he could replace them all with numbers.

It wasn’t like Newt would be looking to read any more than he already had, given how disgusted he was by Hermann’s feelings.

Newton stayed gone for hours and Hermann kept writing for hours. Words kept pouring out of him and onto the page. When he stopped Newt still wasn’t back, and Hermann doubted he would be. He was probably working on a write up in his bunk so that he didn’t have to face Hermann.

Hermann looked back up at the boards again and sighed. He wasn’t going to make any more progress with the way that the silence in the lab felt. It was too quiet, so he took his tablet and stylus and left to go work anywhere else.

* * *

Newt had been known to make bad decisions. Most of those bad decisions ended up leading to major breakthroughs in kaiju science. But the ones he had made over the past few days where Hermann was concerned weren’t leading him anywhere good.

After their fight Newt had gone to hide from Hermann in his bunk. He worked on a write up of the work he had done over the past week or so on his laptop for a few hours. Hermann would know he was avoiding him, but he probably took comfort in that. Now that Newt wasn’t inserting himself so incessantly into his life, he’d have more time for the one that he actually loved.

By the time seven o’clock rolled around Newt forced himself to stop and go get something to eat. He sat across from Tendo who asked where Hermann was, but Newt just shrugged and said he wasn’t his babysitter. He missed Tendo’s confused and vaguely incredulous look because he was poking at his mac and cheese.

After that he decided that he needed to face his fears some day and went back to the lab. At the very least he needed the notes he had left next to the microscope earlier that day when he had fled the lab like the coward he was.

Fortunately, the lab was empty. He went to check that none of the slides had been damaged by his fleeing and abandoning them, then put them away carefully and grabbed his notes. As he turned towards the door his eyes caught on Hermann’s desk.

Unfortunately, the lab was empty so there was nothing to stop his terrible impulse. He knelt next to the bottom drawer again and pulled out the notebook. There was a morbid curiosity to it. A part of him never wanted to meet the man Hermann loved, but another part, the part that was apparently in charge of his body right now, needed to know who it was. To know that they were good enough for Hermann. To know exactly why Newt hadn’t been what he wanted.

The small notebook was slightly thicker this time around and Newt flipped to the back pages where some more had been added since yesterday.

But the tone of the poems were completely different from any that Newt had read before. Something must have happened. Something had happened and now Hermann was upset. Whoever it was had broken things off, or they had gotten into a fight; either way it was bad, and Newt was sitting on the floor crying.

_i’m sorry that you hurt me and i hate that you don’t care_  
_i’m not supposed to love you but i know life isn’t fair_  
 _you don’t need my apologies; they wouldn’t mean a thing_  
 _i’d leave but there’s no satisfaction leaving always brings_  
 _you reached into my chest and pulled my heart out with your hand_  
 _then clenched it tight and let the blood spill out of it like sand_  
 _you threw it to the floor and drove your heel into the rest_  
 _and looking back it hurts but it was for the very best_  
 _now there is just a hole that’s filled with ventricles run dry_  
 _and nothing in my ribs to break in pieces when i cry_  
 _i think that i should thank you for getting the deed done quick_  
 _if i had loved you longer i’d have ended up quite sick_  
 _i walk around a ghost my ribs all rattling and cold_  
 _and now i know that love is not the fire those stories told_  
 _the wind blows through the space you left like music made of loss_  
 _you made my heart too big and now i’m living with the cost_

Poor Hermann. He didn’t deserve to have the shitty week he was having, and Newt was responsible. Or at least partly responsible. Whoever this guy Hermann loved was a real dick to mess with him on the week Newt decided to make his feelings known, accidentally or not.

He turned the page to another, but it took him three times to get through it before the letters and words started to make any sense. Especially since Newt’s name was right in the middle of it.

_i would rob the stars from the sky_  
_just to see a hint of your smile_  
 _i love you more than these simple words say_  
 _and my heart is screaming in pain_  
 _for i know you don’t feel the same_  
 _so i’ll hold my breath until my lungs are numb_

_you were always better than i_   
_you deserve better than i_   
_newton, i know_   
_please don’t come after me_   
_you can’t reason with me_   
_i’ll just go_

He read it over and over again, his fingertips tracing over the deep indentations. It didn’t make any sense. His heart was beating in his ears and he was still sniffling every once in a while, which made it hard to hear anything. Even Hermann coming into the room.

“Newton!” Hermann yelled, from only a few feet away, his face red and eyes wide. “What are you doing?”

Newt scrambled to his feet, gripping the desk when his legs didn’t know how to deal with the blood rushing back into them. “I didn’t mean to.”

Hermann snatched the book out of his hands before taking two steps back and away from Newt. “You didn’t mean to sit on the floor reading my personal effects?” Hermann asked, the anger and pain so clear in his voice that Newt, usually oblivious to the emotions of others, felt it.

“I…Hermann… I mean… That’s my name in that,” Newt stumbled out.

“I am aware of what is in this, Newton. As I’m sure you’ve gathered, I wrote it.” Hermann was flexing his hand on top of his cane as his whole body shook from the anger.

“That doesn’t make any sense.” The poem wasn’t exactly ambiguous but Newt’s own emotions had been running wild even before he had read two of the most gut wrenching poems he’d ever seen. It was quite possible that he wasn’t thinking clearly and that it was all just his own wishful thinking. Sure it said love but most love was platonic. And Newt had been withdrawing from their friendship and if he’d been having trouble with mystery man it probably hurt a touch more than normal.

“Of course it doesn’t,” Hermann said in a tone that made it clear that to him it made perfect sense and that he did not find Newt’s antics amusing. He rolled his eyes and started to turn away.

“I can fix it,” Newt blurted out. Not even he was sure if it was a genuine offer or if it was a ploy to get Hermann to stop walking away.

Either way it did get Hermann to stop and half turn back to him. “How?” he all but spat at him, lips curled in a sneer.

“I’ll talk to him, whoever it is. Whatever he’s mad about I’ll say it’s my fault,” Newt said and he’d thought he was selfish his whole life but in that moment he would have done anything to fix the thing that was tearing him apart. Even as fresh tears burned at the back of his eyes he knew he’d do whatever it took.

Hermann turned a bit more towards him, looking more confused than he had a second before. “Talk to who, exactly?”

“The guy!” Newt yelled as he gestured towards the notebook Hermann still held with a white knuckle grip. “The one you love.” He tried not to let his voice crack but he didn’t know how successful he had been because Hermann was just staring at him, almost all expression gone from his face.

“Who do you think I wrote these about?”

“Your boyfriend,” Newt said. He was genuinely confused; why was Hermann talking around this? They both knew where they stood.

“My _boyfriend_? Do not lie to me, Newton. If you were under such an impression that I had a secret lover, why have you been acting so oddly?”

“Because I thought you had,” Newt started and made air quotes with his hands as he said, “a secret lover.”

“You’re being absurd,” Hermann scoffed as he straightened up a bit the way he did when he thought he had won an argument. “You’re obviously so upset by my affection for you, misplaced as it may be, that it has brought you to tears in the middle of the lab. So please, just admit that you read these yesterday and that my emotional trials are providing your entertainment at the end of the world. It will be easier for us both.”

“I did read some yesterday, but…” Newt trailed off as his mind caught fully up with the conversation for the first time. “For me?”

“Do you enjoy playing stupid?”

“Stupid?!” Newt yelled, his voice cracking into a squeak. “You’re acting like any of this makes sense when you’ve spent the last 5 years hating my guts.”

“I never hated you, Newton. You must have known at least that.” Hermann didn’t sound as angry now, just tired.

Newt wanted to stay angry or at least frustrated but all the emotions that he was so used to showing Hermann were fading and leaving him with only heartbreak and hope and confusion. The mix made his voice quiet when he said, “How? Ever since we met it’s all ‘Newton, your research is pointless’ and ‘You’re the most annoying man on the planet’ and sometimes just straight up saying ‘I hate you’.”

“You said much the same things, did you hate me?”

Newt shrugged. “No.”

“Then why would you assume that the things I said represented the full extent of my feelings towards you?”

Newt shrugged again. He motioned towards the book again. “Is that the extent of your feelings for me?”

Hermann sighed and looked back towards the door. “Newton,” he said with such raw desperation for Newt to not do this, to for once in his life to let something go, that Newt had to cut him off.

“I was weird because I was jealous. I thought you loved someone else and I already knew you didn’t want me but you loved them _so much_.” Even as he spoke and the shock registered on Hermann’s face, Newt felt his confidence wavering. He had been about sixty percent sure that it was a good idea but that confidence was dropping exponentially with every second that Hermann continued to stare at him.

Finally, after what could have been a century, Hermann took a step towards him, hesitant and cautious. “And now that you know that they were about you?”

Newt felt himself smile and Hermann returned it with a shy smile of his own. “Now I kinda just want to kiss you.”

Hermann’s whole face split as he laughed and some of the tension bled out of his shoulders. Newt closed the last two steps between them. His hands itched to be placed on Hermann’s hips, so that he could slide his arms around and fully embrace him when they had their first kiss, but he didn’t want to scare Hermann away so he kept his hands to himself for once.

“Would you desire something along the lines of a romantic entanglement between us?” Hermann asked.

A giddy laugh escaped from his chest. Maybe they would get a happy ending after all, or at least as one could get at the end of the world. “Yes, you nerd.”

For once Hermann didn’t bother with more words and leaned forward enough to plant a light kiss on Newt’s lips. A blush spread across his cheeks as he looked down at Newt, hope and nerves written clearly on his face.

Slowly, so Hermann could stop if he wanted, Newt wrapped his arms around him and brought them chest to chest. He let a beat pass, just staring up into Hermann’s eyes before he leaned up and gave Hermann a lingering kiss. It stretched out from one kiss into many until Newt didn’t know how long they’d been standing in the middle of the lab wrapped up in each other when they parted for more than just a second.

Hermann rested his forehead on Newt’s and neither of them had stopped smiling. For just a second Hermann placed a kiss to the very tip of Newt’s nose, melting his heart. “Don’t ever read my poetry without my permission again.”

**Author's Note:**

> Shout out to Macremae for writing the beautiful poetry for this!!


End file.
